Salzgitter-Gebhardshagen

In summer 1944, another satellite camp of Neuengamme Concentration Camp was located to the west of the Gebhardshagen district. For a period of some two months, at least 300 male prisoners were interned here, among them many French and Soviet citizens. One document even mentions as many as 448 prisoners.

The camp was set up for Erzbergbau Salzgitter GmbH, a company belonging to the Hermann Göring Reichswerke, for the purposes of operating the Haverlahwiese ore mine in the Salzgitter Hills. The wooden huts for the prisoners and the guard barracks were located close to the Haverlahwiese II mineshaft.

Some of the prisoners were put to work in the Haverlahwiese I mineshaft, where they had to drive the gallery and mine the iron ore. But the bulk of the prisoners were assigned to work details above ground, including building a sewage treatment pond and laying out paths and railway tracks.

The camp elder was the German prisoner Johannes Wehres. According to witnesses, the guards were comprised of Wehrmacht soldiers and Ukrainian auxiliary troops.

The Gebhardshagen camp was dissolved on 30 September 1944. The mining company Erzbergbau Salzgitter GmbH switched to POWs for their workforce; the concentration camp prisoners were handed over to the SS and transported back to the main camp at Neuengamme. The majority of the prisoners identified by name were subsequently redistributed to the satellite camps at Kaltenkirchen and Husum.